Four ways to help you overcome inaction

Have you ever been fired up to make changes and achieve your goals only to find that in a month or two you’ve been plagued by inaction?

Often we know what we need to do to get healthier and achieve our goals, but we get in our own way and fail to do anything. To help you, here are four ways to help you overcome inaction.

Identify your distractions

Let’s face it, we live in a world full of distractions, and they can quickly get in the way of us taking action on our health goals. Busy schedules, long to-do lists, looming deadlines, kids, family, friends and “downtime” in front of screens can all distract us and fill our days to the brim if we don’t consciously carve out time for ourselves to focus on our health and goals.

Identify the perpetrators of your inaction and beware even the noblest tasks and roles can become an excuse and distraction if we don’t have healthy boundaries.

Take imperfect action

Perhaps you are someone who gets discouraged by your inability to do something perfectly or as well as you think you should. Sound familiar? This can lead to procrastination and inaction, and it becomes harder and harder even to get started.

But any action – even imperfect action – towards your goal is still progress. Also if you make a mistake, or it doesn’t work out as you initially planned you have still learnt something, you have still grown. Just start!

Be mindful of overwhelm

While change can be a good thing, too much change can be overwhelming. At the beginning of the year we can be motivated to make lots of changes, and while this can be great, it can be challenging to maintain. Instead, try working on and mastering one change at a time. Then when this has become a habit make another.

Break down bigger goals into smaller habits

For example, if your goal is to drink 2L of water each day you could break this down further by setting an hourly or half hourly alarm to drink water. This ensures that you continually make progress towards your goal. Similarly, if your goal is to get one hour more of sleep set a bedtime reminder to keep you on track.

Over to you, how do you overcome or guard against inaction towards your goals?